


Were You Waiting?

by fiction_before_reality



Series: All AoS, All the Time [9]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Blind Date, F/M, Stood Up, aka Daniel Sousa is a good and sweet soul, also Daisy showing off her powers, dousy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:46:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29146896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiction_before_reality/pseuds/fiction_before_reality
Summary: Daisy's blind date is a no-show, and Daniel Sousa steps in.
Relationships: Skye | Daisy Johnson/Daniel Sousa
Series: All AoS, All the Time [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2127987
Comments: 18
Kudos: 58





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is set in some wack-ass AU where they both work at SHIELD and haven't really met yet, but there's also no time travel. I don't know man, my little gremlin brain writes things and then I make them everyone else's problems. Also if literally anyone shows any interest in a second chapter of this, I will definitely write one.

_‘He’s not here, and I’m going to kill you’_

Daisy sent this text to Jemma, who had _insisted_ that she go on this date with whats-his-face from Admin. His name was Jim, she knew, but whats-his-face had a better ring when he was 30 minutes late for dinner. She had tried texting him, but he wasn’t responding, and she had no clue if he had seen her texts and was standing her up or if something had just kept him late at the office. It wasn’t exactly a 9-5 job working for SHIELD, even as a pencil pusher, but a quick text or call would’ve been nice.

Daisy glanced up again, moving the menu she held in front of her face down. Her waitress was circling around again. Daisy planned to slip her a $10 bill for her trouble and bolt, but just before the waitress got to the table, a man slipped into the booth across from her.

“Sorry I’m late, traffic was awful,” he said easily and apologetically. The waitress veered off at the last second, seeing that Daisy’s date had finally arrived and needed to get settled.

There was just one little problem—this wasn’t Jim.

“And who the hell are you?” Daisy asked in a light tone.

The man across from her ducked his head a bit. “Yeah, sorry. I know this is really weird. I’m Daniel. Daniel Sousa. I’ve seen you around HQ, and this is my favorite spot off base, and I was getting some dinner and saw you sitting alone. I figured you might like some company.”

Now that Daisy was looking at him, she remembered seeing him in FitzSimmons lab. She had been bleeding fairly heavily at the time, so she hadn’t been too concerned with the other agents in the room, but it was hard to forget a man like this. They had passed in the halls a few times before that too, shared an elevator once. Why hadn’t she noticed the crinkle in his brow before, the tiny bit of gray at his temples?

“How’s the leg doing?” Daisy asked. “Fitz mentioned yesterday he was having some trouble because of how long you’ve been without it, something about Simmons having to calibrate for the different muscle development?”

Daniel motioned to the cane he had leaned up against the wall next to him. “They haven’t quite figured it out yet, and I’m a bit scared to go without this until they do. It’s fine most of the time, until it isn’t.” He seemed almost sheepish as he continued, “But honestly, I’d prefer not to talk about my leg or our work right now. Were you waiting for someone here?”

It took Daisy a second to remember Jim. She checked her phone again. Still no text. “Jemma set me up with a guy from Admin, but it really doesn’t look like he’s going to show. You seem like more interesting dinner company anyways, if you don’t mind me crashing your peaceful plans?”

Daniel smiled and teased, “Well I don’t know, I was really looking forward to getting takeout and heading back to my apartment. My show is on tonight and I wouldn’t want to miss it.” He got a little more serious. “Nah but for real, I don’t mind at all. You seem cool, and I want to get to know you a bit.”

Daisy smiled back. “What is it you want to know? Ask me a question. It’s the least I can do, seeing as how you’re saving me from a bit of an embarrassing time explaining to the waitress why I’m leaving.”

Speaking of the waitress seemed to summon her, as she came to grab Daisy and Daniel’s orders. Once she left, Daniel said, “Well, let’s start simple. Where are you from?”

Daisy laughed. “That’s actually … a really complicated question. Short answer, New York City from as long as I could remember until I ran away from the orphanage at about 15. Since then, I’ve just kind of bounced around until SHIELD picked me up when I was 24, maybe 25? My timeline is a little bit messy.” She shrugged.

“Well, that’s quite the short answer.” Daniel grinned. “How about you ask me a question now, one that you know you can answer.”

Daisy looked around and crinkled her face in a joking manner. “Let’s start small. What’s your favorite color?”

“Oof, that’s a tough one.” Daniel sucked air in through his teeth. “I’m going to have to go with blue. Like the sky right after it rains, just as the sun is starting to come out. What about you?”

“Purple, without a doubt. I saw this one sunset when I was in Bali. That mission was a mess, but one of the windows in the place I was tied up showed me a glimpse of the best view I’ve ever had. It was this perfect mix of purple and pink and orange. I considered taking up painting just to capture that.”

Daniel blinked at her. “ _Tied up_? That sounds like a bit of a story.”

“Not for tonight it isn’t. That’s a work topic, and we’re steering clear of that right now.”

He sighed. “Fine, I suppose I _did_ make the rules. My turn. Favorite place that you’ve been to that wasn’t for a mission?”

Daisy thought for a moment. “I’m going to have to go with the Grand Canyon. It’s a bit cheesy, but the hiking is unbeatable. And I’ve never been out of the country other than with SHIELD.”

Daniel looked shocked. “ _Never?_ Like not even once?”

She laughed. “Yeah, last I checked, that was what never meant. I always wanted to go, but I was too nervous. And well, I haven’t exactly had much free time in the past decade or so, between the half dozen times that SHIELD has been called a terrorist organization and the equal number of global catastrophes. The closest thing I’ve had to a vacation besides space was Afterlife, and neither of those counts at all.”

Daniel groaned. “I know I said no work talk, but that was a hell of a statement, and I need to know more. What the hell is Afterlife, and why wasn’t it really a vacation?”

“Oh, it’s where I learned to control my powers. It was a lovely place other than the sketchy politics and mild cultishness. Afterlife was designed for Inhumans to live in peace temporarily, especially after they went through Terrigenesis. I still feel awful that it was destroyed.” Daisy sighed.

“Wait, you’re an Inhuman?”

Daisy was startled out of her self-reflection. “Yeah, I thought everyone at work knew. I have powers.”

Daniel grinned. “Damn if that’s not the coolest thing. What’s your power, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Well Agent Sousa. If you play your cards right, I’ll do you one better. Once we’ve eaten, I’ll show you my powers.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daisy shows Sousa her powers, and they talk, mostly about her Terrigenesis and Trip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, a second chapter! My gremlin brain has written more words and made them not my problem!

“Ok Daniel,” Daisy said with a slightly nervous laugh. “Stand back.”

They were in the basement training room at HQ. It was built like any of the other training rooms. There was padding along the floor and three out of the four walls, while the fourth wall was a mirror so that people could correct their form even if they were working alone. In one corner there was a pile of punching bags down from the hooks that suspended them from the ceiling, as well as a bunch of other training equipment.

Unlike the other training rooms, this one was lined with the same polykinetic material that lined the containment modules. Superpowers could be used in here, but they wouldn’t affect anything outside the room.

Daisy had suited up with her heavy-duty gauntlets, and now she shook her shoulders and arms out. She held her hands up in front of her with her fingers splayed as she tried the quake equivalent of a curveball. The wave of vibrations did what she wanted it to for the first time since she had started working on this particular trick, bending around the first target she had set up and throwing the second one back into the wall.

Daisy spun around the room, waiting for the targets to pop out randomly and hitting every one of them with a vibration. She threw some of her quakes with an open hand, but other ones she threw from a closed fist as an extension of a punch. When the final three targets across the room popped out, she threw one larger quake that hit all three at the same time.

She stopped and grabbed her water bottle, finally turning to look at Sousa. He was standing back against the door to the basement training room and looked positively flabbergasted. “Well holy shit.” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Daisy chuckled as she settled down on the middle of the floor. She held up a hand to help Sousa sit next to her, which he accepted. “I am one of a kind.”

Daniel kept blinking. “You sure are. How long have you been able to do that? Like when did you go through Terrigenesis? Oh, during that whole fish oil thing a few years back, right? I wasn’t with SHIELD yet, but I’ve heard about it.”

“I had my powers before that.” Daisy’s face closed off. “We were on a mission in Puerto Rico chasing down Hydra for like the fifteenth time.” She stopped to take a drink from her water bottle. “I was kidnapped by the Hydra agent Grant Ward, who was also my former SO and a total creep, on behalf of my biological father, so that they could take me to undergo Terrigenesis and become who I was meant to be. I wasn’t the only one who went in. I went to stop this woman named Raina from going through the process. We didn’t know what was going to happen, we thought it was going to unleash an apocalyptic event. Hell, it might’ve if Trip didn’t wreck it.”

Daisy stopped and swallowed heavily a few times. “Agent Antoine Triplett was a good man who tried to save me. He followed me into the chamber during Terrigenesis. The Terrigenesis crystals appeared. Since I’m an Inhuman, I got encased in a Terrigenesis cocoon. He didn’t know that it wouldn’t hurt me. Trip roundhouse-kicked the crystals, trying to stop the process. I watched him turn to stone in front of me, and my grief was so intense that I kinda … broke San Juan. I didn’t realize until Afterlife that it wasn’t just earthquakes that I could make.”

They sat in silence for a moment before Daniel spoke. “Trip sounds like a good man.”

A small smile appeared on Daisy’s face. “He was one of the best. He always used to say this thing in a super specific tone. He’d say, “come on, girl” whenever someone teased him or did something he didn’t want done. He was amazing. He was family, before I had one and before I lost them.”

Daisy closed her eyes and leaned her head back as she started to remember more about Trip. She shared everything she remembered with Daniel. It had been so long since she had talked about him. There were so many other people she had known and lost, whether permanently or not, that she had just stopped talking about them all.

At some point, Daisy had moved close enough to Daniel that she could lean her head against his shoulder. They were sitting side-by-side on the floor, and he wrapped one of his arms around her, running his hand up and down her shoulder in a comforting motion.

“He always used to jump-scare me on the Bus—that was our old plane. He’d wait for twenty minutes or more if he thought I was going to come into a room so that he could jump out from behind the door just to mess with me. I “accidentally” shot him once.” At Daniel’s look over her air quotes, she laughed. “It was just an ICER, and he deserved it. He was a bit more cautious about scaring me after that.”

Daisy had a soft smile on her face as she remembered all of the stuff he had done. “Once, he tackled me to stop me from getting our teammate Hunter to talk about his she-devil ex-wife, who incidentally became like a sister to me when she came back from being undercover at Hydra.” For the first time ever, her heart didn’t ache talking about Bobbi and Hunter. There was a pang of sadness, but it was wholly eclipsed by the love she felt for them.

Daisy eventually fell silent, not because she had run out of stories but because she had too many of them. She remembered Daniel sitting there, and she jerked her head up from his shoulder as she looked at him. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to keep rattling on like that.”

Her face was so close to his, and it took him a few seconds to remember how to respond. “I’m glad you feel like you can talk to me, and I loved hearing the stories. I have some of my own that I’d love to share with you eventually.”

“Eventually?” Daisy asked. “Why not right now?” She licked her lips briefly and Daniel’s breath hitched. He saw her eyes dart towards his mouth, but she looked back at him and grinned.

His voice was exceedingly soft as he brought his hand up to rest against her cheek. “Because if you’re alright with it, I would very much like to kiss you right now.”

Daisy tilted her head a bit. “I’m very very alright with that.” Before Daniel could do anything, she had already leaned into him.

The kiss started soft, but that lasted all of about .2 seconds before they were devouring each other. Daisy was raking her hands through his hair and running them up and down his back. Daniel had one hand buried in her hair holding her to him, and his other hand had moved down her neck from her cheek and around her body to the small of her back, where he was seemingly trying to bring her as close to him as possible.

Daisy huffed when she couldn’t get any closer to him because they were both still sitting on the padded floor. She broke off the kiss and pushed Daniel back onto the floor, ensuring that she could basically crawl over top of him and continue kissing the hell out of him.

Daniel certainly wasn’t complaining about the change of angles. This freed him up to run his hands up and down Daisy’s back, arms, shoulders—wherever the hell he could reach. Just as she pulled back to say something, the training room door opened.

Daisy rolled off Daniel as Mack walked through the door. “Oh hell nah. I’m the fucking Director and I still have to deal with walking in on couples making out all over the place? God, between Hunter and Bobbi, FitzSimmons, and apparently y’all, I’m sick of it! I’ve been dealing with this for more than five goddamn years.”

Mack sighed and rubbed his hands down his face. “Daisy, I saw that you were in the building and I needed to talk to you. Swing by my office when you get a chance, please. You too, Agent Sousa.” Without another word, he turned on his heel and left.

Daisy was worrying her lip between her teeth as she turned to Daniel, who was still laying down on the floor, now propped up on his elbows. “Hey,” was all she could think to say.

Daniel grinned at her. “Hey yourself.”

“So … I guess we should head up to Mack’s office.” Daisy hesitated before she bounced up from her sitting position and grabbed her water bottle. She offered a hand to help Daniel up, which he accepted. She pulled with an amount of force that was surprising given her slight frame.

When Daisy grabbed her bag and headed for the door, Daniel laughed and stopped her. “You may want to straighten your hair out a bit,” he said, running his fingers through his own hair.

Daisy turned towards the wall of mirrors and gasped a bit before laughing. “Sousa, we were literally making out for like five minutes. How did you fuck my hair up this badly?” She combed through her tangled hair with her fingers.

Daniel just gave her a shrug and a smirk. “You certainly weren’t complaining five minutes ago.”

Daisy huffed and shook her head as she headed to the door, still fussing with her hair.

It only took a few minutes for the pair to make their way up to Mack’s office. When they got there, he directed Daniel to wait outside and for Daisy to come in. She closed the door behind her, feeling apprehensive.

“What’s up, Director?” Daisy made sure that her face was showing none of her anxiety as she leaned up against the conference table that Mack had in his large office.

He turned from the window to face her. “Well, I was going to tell you about a few potential recruits for your new team and let you take your pick of them. Now I’m adding one more: Sousa.”

“Sir?” Daisy was trying to work her way through the logic that brought him there. Fraternization among fellow agents wasn’t forbidden, but it was to be avoided, especially if the people in question worked on the same team. But Mack couldn’t make any rules that he and Elena weren’t going to follow, so it was what it was.

Mack laughed, which was the one thing Daisy hadn’t been expecting. “The only reason I didn’t put him on your team weeks ago is because Yo-Yo and I had a bet on whether or not you guys were going to kiss or get together, and she said it would be unfair of me to alter the situation by putting you two together. Now that y’all have already at least kissed, I won and you can work together.”

“You two _bet_ on us?” Daisy didn’t know whether to laugh or be angry.

“Hey, I’m just trying to keep Hunter’s spirit alive in SHIELD. I’m sure he’d be thrilled to hear about it.”

Daisy scoffed. “How much money did we win you?”

“Twenty bucks and the right to the tv remote for the next two months.” Mack grinned. “It’s impossible to beat the woman with superspeed to the remote.”

Mack went behind his desk and grabbed his tablet, tapping at it a few times. “I just sent the other personnel files to your tablet. Like I said, I’m giving you Sousa for sure. Let me know who else you want or if you want to talk to any of them further, and I’ll make it happen.”

“Thanks, Director.” Daisy turned to leave his office, then stopped for a minute. “Any chance Flint is on that list?”

“He’s on there. He graduates from the Academy next week and May swears by him.”

Daisy nodded and left the room, gesturing Daniel into Mack’s office.

***

Daniel cleared his throat before entering Mack’s office and closing the door. “Yes, Director?”

“Have a seat, Agent Sousa.” Mack gestured at the chairs in front of his desk as he sat behind it.

Daniel sat down and tried his best not to fidget. He was still relatively new to SHIELD, having transferred from the FBI, and this was a whole different ball game. And if he could believe even a tenth of the stories that he had heard about any of SHIELD’s new top brass, then he was in way out of his depth. Who the hell uses a hybrid shotgun-axe as their primary weapon?

Mack studied Daniel’s face intently before he leaned back in his chair. “What are your intentions with Daisy?”

“My … intentions, sir? I don’t have any.”

“Well then you damn well better get some. Daisy likes you, obviously, and she has been hurt enough. I don’t want anyone playing around with the woman I think of as my little sister.”

“Playing around isn’t really my style,” Sousa replied.

“You don’t seem like the type, but I’ve been wrong before. When I am wrong, it doesn’t tend to end up well for the person that tries to hurt someone I care about. Understood?”

“I understand that you’re threatening me … sir.”

Mack chuckled lightly. “Not just me. Every member of Daisy’s team. All of us would die for that woman, and we would certainly kill for her. If you really want to know what we’ve done for one another, pick a random case file or have a chat with Daisy.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard bits and pieces already. You don’t have to worry though, Director. I would never do anything to hurt her.”

“Great!” Mack smacked his hand on the desk, the swift motion startling Sousa. “I’m assigning you to Daisy’s new team. Congrats, Agent Sousa, you’re now part of our top squad.”

Mack reached a hand out to Daniel, and he shook it on instinct. “Thank you, Director. I’ll do my best.”

Mack motioned for Sousa to leave, and he obliged. When he got out to the hallway, he saw Daisy leaning against the wall.

“So, the Director told you you’re on my team?” Daisy asked him. Daniel nodded. “Good. We’re going to be a mobile rapid-response unit on Zephyr-2. We leave in less than a month for a six-month rotation, so get your affairs in order before then.”

As she spoke, the pair began making their way down to the ground floor. They chatted about the team, about where they hoped to go and where they wanted to avoid.

Daisy said, “The only places I really hope to avoid are San Juan and a very specific part of the Italian countryside. I got shot twice the one time I was there. 0/10, I would not recommend.”

“I’m going to be honest; I don’t really like Idaho. No bad memories or anything, there’s just nothing except potatoes, corn, and some cows.”

Daisy laughed and shook her head at him. “You’re such a dork.” She smiled as the elevator opened into the lobby. “I think this is the start of something pretty amazing.”

“I think you might be right.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, please leave a comment! It makes my day!  
> And as always, prompts can be submitted to me in a comment below or on Tumblr ([@fictional-before-real](http://fictional-before-real.tumblr.com/) ).  
> Also, stay tuned. I've got a big Dousy fic in the works (meaning that instead of working on my classwork I wrote 8k words yesterday.)


End file.
